Will the Times move to a New York Times-style metered paywall?

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Asked whether the Times will follow the New York Times' (NYT)
metered paywall model launched last year, Tom Whitwell, editorial
director of Times Digital today said: "If we genuinely believe that
will work, we will do that."

"If you can have your cake and eat it and sell it at the same
time", the Times wants a piece. But Whitwell, who oversaw the
Times' July 2010 move to a paywall, is yet to be convinced.

Speaking at the Paywall Strategies conference in London, Whitwell
explained that while the Times has no current plans, it is watching
the
Grey Lady's model closely.

"We look at any of these systems," he told Journalism.co.uk. "And
if we see a system that works better than our one we would probably
move to that system.

"It's not that we are considering that, planning that. The system
we have at the moment works very well."

"I personally think there are huge problems with those kinds of
systems where you are trying to sell something and give it away at
the same time.

"It's a confusing message, I think it's difficult; but if someone
showed me some data that proved you can give it away and sell it at
the same time, we would look at that data and and I'm sure we would
do it in that way."

Paywalls and social media barriers

Without a NYT-style metered paywall model, the Times does not
benefit from non-subscribers sharing content.

"It's fiddlier for us to do it," Whitwell said, pointing out that
@timesfashion has amassed 750,000 followers.

Whitwell hinted that the Times may be looking at ways social media
clicks can access paid-for content.

Working how we
let people read articles that people have shared will be a
significant improvement of what we are doingTom
Whitwell

"Working how we let people read articles
that people have shared will be a significant improvement of what
we are doing."

"Paid journalism can still go viral," Whitwell explained, adding
that it's not that paywalled articles that will be spread via
social media, but that having a paid content system "has not
stopped" the potentially viral nature of Facebook and Twitter being
tapped.

The Times has run "several successful social media campaigns",
including a recent one promoting cycling. The campaign was across
digital and print platforms, with a hashtag on Twitter.

"A form lets you write a letter to your MP, put a badge on your
blog," Whitwell said.

"It's just using those simple social media tools, but to do an
editorial campaign."

Last year saw Word Nerd used by 40,000 Twitter users. That was
dreamt up to promote Times journalists on Twitter. They were
linking to content behind the wall, promoting subscriptions.

"We built this tool where you go onto the site, you type in your
Twitter name and and then it uses a thing called the Google Ngram
Database to analyse the vocabulary in those words."

You are then returned a score to tell you how wide or narrow your
vocabulary.

"About 5,000 people put in @StephenFry to find out what Stephen
Fry's score was."

Further areas were also discussed.

Platform spread

The Times is "spreading to different platforms", says Whitwell

The news outlet offers a £2-a-week subscription online, iPad,
iPhone and Android apps, is available on Kindle, and has a web app
(currently in beta).

Whitwell said "I'm sure we'll be doing something interesting on the
Kindle Fire when that comes out."

Going digital

There are 120,000 "pure paying" digital subscribers, some of whom
come through the iTunes store and some of whom are direct
subscribers, Whitwell said.

In addition there are around 100,000 who gain access via a print
subscription.

"That's the closest digital equivalent of someone going to the news
stand and picking up a copy."

Over Christmas around 10,000 people a day were downloading the app
itself, the vehicle necessary to permit purchase of the iPad
edition.

There are evening peaks in app use and "video does very well".

Comments and community

The Times currently gets around 1,500 reader comments every day.
"We now have 50 or 60 per cent of volume and quality is that much
higher", Whitwell said.

But how much money is all of this providing? Whitwell was not
prepared to share revenue figures but did say: "We are making more
money now from subscriptions and advertising than we were from just
advertising. That's what we wanted to achieve."

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